Well I must say, there was some dazzling stuff at Prime Minister’s questions today. But for those who might have expected some light, rather than heat, to emerge; there was disappointment. The score was 5-5 in footballing terms. A dazzling draw.
Harriet Harman’s display of debating skill was particularly stunning today. Her point was very simple and powerful. 1.3 million jobs will be lost as a result of government budget cuts, says a report this morning.
David Cameron didn’t deny this estimate came out of the treasury or say that he would publish what Harman called these “hidden treasury documents”. He did make another point. So, I think Harman scored her 5 goals on this matter. 1.3 million is a devastating figure. This one will run and run.
Cameron sort of blind-sided the point by saying that the Office of Budget Responsibility forecast says employment will go up for every year of the current parliament. A strong point, but that is obviously net employment. 1.3million people losing their jobs is still devastating for the individuals and families concerned – even if, say, 1.4million people (perhaps not the same ones) are finding jobs, sometimes with a considerable period of worry between losing one and finding another.
Cameron scored his 5 goals, not for anything of substance, but for a dazzling display of debating pyrotechnics at the end of his Q&A with Harman. Re-stating that Labour have not offered one proposal for a cut, he brandished a copy of the departmental magazine from Harman’s old department of government. He said they spent £2.4million doing up the department including £72,000 each on two storey meeting pods known as “peace pods” which the magazine said give “21st century space of quality, air and light where we can relax and refuel in the natural ebb and flow”. Cameron then finished very strongly saying “they (Labour) have gone from peaceniks to peacepods and bankrupted the country in the process”.
As a piece of Commons theatrics it was stunning. Oh how they laughed. Oh how Harman mouthed repeatedly “rubbish”. But you could pull out a supposedly embarrassing element of spending for any government. Just take the insanity of “free schools” from this government. Yes, good theatrics. But I don’t think Cameron buttered a single parsnip with that display, albeit dazzling. In other words, if you’re unfamiliar with that obscure old fashioned term, he was not high on substance.
Nevertheless, in answer to a later question, the Prime Minister did deliver one good line. He was asked, again, about public sector job losses, and asked that Labour should engage in the deficit reduction process “instead of playing this pathetic game pretending that there wouldn’t have been cuts under Labour. There would have been. You announced them – you just didn’t tell anyone what they were”. He said that very emphatically. I thought it was his best line of the session.
Here is a miscellany of other things we learnt, or which happened, in this session:
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39 Comments
1.3 million is a lot bigger than the OBR figure. I’d like to see where it comes from.
As for the world being turned upside down, this happened in about 1995. Labour has been the worst on crime since then.
The OBR figure is 600,000 job losses in the piblic sector with 2 million private sector gains. Leaving employment 1.4 million higher. Good news.
The comment you make about people losing their jobs indicates you do not understand how a modern economy operates. In a normal month the figures may be (as an example ) a net gain of 20,000 positions. This is a net figure and 80,000 could have lost their jobs but 100,000 gained jobs. It is flexible and fluid. This is normal.
@Mike “The comment you make about people losing their jobs indicates you do not understand how a modern economy operates”
Of course, but does anyone – except Warren Buffet? 😉
@Joe Otten “As for the world being turned upside down, this happened in about 1995.”
Indeed, Joe. I think that was about the time I last visited that pub….
“David Cameron answered a question about Sheffield Forgemasters by talking about the Post Office. Eh?”
Are you seriously expecting this question to be answered AGAIN? It has been answered time and time again, and no amount of dead-horse-flogging is going to change the government’s mind on this one.
@Joe Otten “1.3 million is a lot bigger than the OBR figure. I’d like to see where it comes from.”
The 1.3 million jobs lost is made up for with 2.5 million jobs created in the same time.
“The OBR figure is 600,000 job losses in the public sector with 2 million private sector gains. Leaving employment 1.4 million higher. Good news.”
I’d like some of what you have in your bong 🙂
Even the FT believes the idea of the private sector rescuing us from net job LOSS over this parliament to be “heroically optimistic”. I think you need to go back to your A level economics textbooks.
The one thing that did grate with me somewhat – though I understand why he did it – was Cameron praising the work of an MP’s father in encouraging sell-off of council housing. Considering the current problems and lack of affordable housing, and the need for more affordable rented housing – indeed, criticism of Labour for not doing more to do this – I’m not so sure that was a great move.
“The 1.3 million jobs lost is made up for with 2.5 million jobs created in the same time.”
Channel 4 news factcheck: just one source amongst many- perhaps the most damning being David Blanchflower in the Guardian. That paper wishing it had never endorsed you !
Cathy Newman’s verdict
David Cameron accurately quoted official figures in parliament, so he gets a green light from the factometer. But his claim that unemployment will fall every year requires a big leap of faith. He’ll only be able to meet that promise if the private sector roars ahead.If taxes and interest rates are kept low, that might happen, but it’s a big if. Research by the consultancy Oxford Economics just this month found that *2.3m private sector jobs* were dependent on state contracts in areas like IT, defence and hospitals. As public spending falls, those employees are in jeopardy.
PS
According to the ONS, the private sector employee count went up by just over 1.8 million between 1999 and 2008. That’s slightly fewer extra workers than the OBR expects – and over twice as long a timescale.
Add to this the fact that the global economic conditions aren’t exactly rosy right now, and according to one leading economist, there’s not a “hope in hell” that it’s likely.
“You’ve got to offset not just for a lot of public sector job losses but also private sector job losses,” said John Philpott, chief economist at the CIPD (who predicted earlier this month that up to 725,000 public sector jobs would have to go). “Against a backdrop where we’re going to be seeing hundreds of thousands of public servants losing their jobs, and hundreds of thousands of private sector workers who are dependent on the government for contracts, it’s clear there’s going to be a major challenge for the government if it’s going to meet its employment objectives,” he said.
The `Coalition Government`s’ announcement via the Justice Secretary has admitted that between 60%-90% males at the end of a short prison sentence are re-offending that and this added crime is now costing the Economy over £20K each year, that equals the amount of sending a pupil to Eton College for each ex-offender/re-offender.
It is not time to hold the Justice Secretary to his stated intent to substantially reduce numbers of young males serving relatively short prison sentences and now invest in community restorative justice alternatives to underline payback community work as local practical rehabilitation?
Not enough has been done since the penal reformer John Howard in the 18C who travelled 42,000 miles across Europe to inspect the vileness of the prisons, when petty offenders men and women alike, were incarcerated in leg irons or left to languish on `prison hulks’ at sea. In 2010 there are almost 90,000 prisoners in the UK and the rate is increasing.
Has the Justice Secretary at last turned a corner to focus on this long overdue humanitarian work and realised that all families are affected by the highest rate in the EU rate of ex- prisoner `recidivism ?
My biggest fear with this coalition is that in essence it has come up with a thatcherite gov, that the LD mainstream is unselected in this and will increasingly be marginalised in much the same way as the “wets” from the thatcher era.
This recent thing on employment is obvious you do not nead a Phd in economics to realise cuts = unemployment 600K from the public plus another 700K in the private sector I believe. These figures have come from an independent body (although I actually do not think that such a thing is possible and only time will tell).
Having lived thro the Thatcher era and seen unemployment rise from 700K to over 3 million and having heard a budget that described cuts bigger then I think these figs are errr wrong, within the way they were presented there is also a huge clue to the supposed independence that is that the fig of 600K was presented in such a way as to say look the fig in first 3 years is less due to wage policy. This is utter non sense the cuts are going to start sooner and deeper and this is only there to try giving weight to negotiations in the public sector.
I really think as I have written before that fear of losing jobs, fear of losing pensions, fear of losing equity for retirement in houses to be downsized are real issues here and are going to have tremendous impact on domestic demand and therefore employment. I really don’t know the figs nut a town may have 10,000 people in it belt tightening may mean that they consume 200 less restaurant meals a week that will mean a restraint shuts. This sort of thing is real and will happen irrespective of if that is where the jobs are to be lost.
I cannot convoy to you guys the scale of how large a betrayal of ordinary centre leftish people this is without being moderated out this government is about to embark on the most savage cuts, and part of his government is of the centre and its leaders are acting like thatcherites IMO.
Please please please read this and actually think of the alternatives, they are as laid out by others plus the nuclear leaving the party and staying ion as independent Liberal Democrats ironically this is the only advantage that a first past the post system has, but we are where we are
This one won’t “run and run”. What we’re getting at the moment is an awful lot of noise from people who seem to think that the job of the state is to employ people, whether those people then do anything useful or not. The state needs winding down. It’s taken on hundreds of thousands of people and given them powers and budgets to do things that, at best, don’t need doing and that an awful lot of the time are just a blasted nuisance for the rest of us.
This one isn’t ‘running’ now.
@ chriss, running?
I think this is important, and do not really care if ity is on the surface at the moment nor did I care when I first raised the issue of unemployment as a result of this budget. I am not saying that anyone owes antone a job, nor am I saying that a policeman, fireman, planing officer, street sweeper discharge facilatator or librarian is usefull or not. I am saying that going out to cut 25% in the private sector will put people out of work in both private and public.
It is something that will be large scale over a million and it will have a knock on effect. The last time anything like this happened (and yes I know in 1980 things were more labour intensive) unemployment went up over 2 million.
Currently the econemy is on the edge, if you dont believe me take a walk up your local high street and see the boarded up shops, my belief is that thev fear of unemployment and uncertainty associated with other elements is about to push the econemy over the edge, if you think things are bad wnow wait untill the double whamie of cuts and fear take effect.
In the meantime you are welcome to the running stories
What we’re getting at the moment is an awful lot of noise from people who seem to think that the state should employ less people, whether those people do anything useful or not.
@Chris: “This one won’t “run and run”. What we’re getting at the moment is an awful lot of noise from people who seem to think that the job of the state is to employ people, whether those people then do anything useful or not. The state needs winding down. It’s taken on hundreds of thousands of people and given them powers and budgets to do things that, at best, don’t need doing and that an awful lot of the time are just a blasted nuisance for the rest of us.
This one isn’t ‘running’ now.”
I have to say I agree with the sentiment there, but would love to have seen more support at local level rather than a general ‘chop’.
Chris:
“This one won’t “run and run”. What we’re getting at the moment is an awful lot of noise from people who seem to think that the job of the state is to employ people, whether those people then do anything useful or not.”
When you’re looking at cuts of 20-30%, you can be damn sure that that will include people who do useful and valuable things. The Tories are using the recession to swing the axe according to their ideology, not economic literacy. The only good thing is that, afterwards, they’ll be so unpopular they’ll be out of power again for a generation. The only downside is that so will we (but then, we’re used to that).
Look at the previous story on this blog- the one about the immense and unnecessary bureaucracy small venues have to go through to have live music performances. It’s just one tiny example. The Labour government piled officialdom on top of every aspect of our lives. I’m utterly convinced that my local council could make cuts of 20-30% without there being any need whatsoever for anyone to notice, except in a good way. Quite frankly, I reckon they could get down to 20-30% of the current budget without losing anything worthwhile.
Of course councils, and let’s face it they’re the big wasters, will cut services people actually want and keep the useless stuff. They’ve been doing that for years. Big holes in the road and don’t you dare ask them to empty the bins, but they can produce a small crowd of inspectors at the drop of a hat. In many ways we’ve already learned to do without council ‘services’.
Chris,
Councils, especially those in London, have bene making efficiency savings under the Gershom prohgramme for years. There’s not a lot of fat left to skim off. Sure, there are plenty of civil servants and local governemnt officers who could be let go, but 1 in 5? Not a chance. And remember, you may not see the effect immediately, but soon you will, by which time it will be too late. For example, yes, you could save money by employing fewer safety inspectors on the railways (i assume that they are included your ‘small army’) and not notice the difference immediately, but once the trains start crashing then you’ll sit up.
Have you ever worked in a school, care home, local council or government department? i suspect you wouldn’t be writing be above if you had and knew what you were talking about.
Dominic
Can you explain to me why, where it used to take one teacher, five local housewives have to be hired to work as teaching assistants in every primary classroom now? Why the local council has to pay for a completely useless village PCSO to wind up teenagers, ensuring that they grow up feeling disillusioned and excluded from society? Why I have a huge local trading standards department which doesn’t take any sort of query from the public, but instead does what it wants about issues that are of no concern to me or anyone I know?
Look, the rest of us can see what’s going on. Telling us that any cuts will mean we can’t have a fire service really really won’t wash.
Chris – are you sure you want to read LibDem voice? I think the Daily Mail might be a better site for you.
Teaching Assistants do a valuable job – ask the teachers. There aren’t ‘five in every classroom’ and you know it. As for your village PCSO – i can’t deny that I would prefer actual police, and that we have taken a legislative approach to dealing with kids whereas i think a more old fashioned informal approach would be better. But bear in mind that PCSOs are a much smaller fraction of the total police force than 25% – we will be losing ‘real’ police witht hat level of cuts. And if you think there’s no connection to crime levels and police numbers, you’re quite mistaken. as for your trading standards dept – i don’t know. I suspect that if you think that there are five housewives in every primary school classroom then you probably are calling up your council to complain about utterly random, ill-informed nonsense.
Dominic – are you sure you want to read LibDem voice? You must be one of the ‘progressives’ Labour keeps on about.
if you really believe that the public sector is providing value to justify the almost half of GDP that it spends, then I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you.
chris – i am a progressive, that’s why i’m in the libdems! what’s your excuse?
you’re mixing up inefficiency and waste in the public sector – which we can all agree happens – with an acceptance, it seems, that cuts of 25% in almost every department can be done by getting rid of ‘waste’ – what cleggy called ‘paperclips and pot plants’ during the election – ie. pointless public sector jobs that produce nothing. what i’m saying is that at that level, it will mean real jobs at the frontline. there may be many ‘non-jobs’ out there, but not 1 in 4, or even, i’d say, 1 in 6. that scale of cuts, unheard of in history, is going to affect your life, from less help to the elderly and vulnerable to slower planning application processing to fewer police and possibly even more baby Ps as social workers’ caseloads increase due to there being fewer of them about.
@Chris
“Can you explain to me why, where it used to take one teacher, five local housewives have to be hired to work as teaching assistants in every primary classroom now?”
Speaking as a parent of a child with a full “SEN Statement” I read your comment regarding the above and have to say that I find such comments not only offensive but particularly worrying.
Children with any level of Special Educational Needs should be given every opportunity to be included at all levels of society.
My son attends the local Primary School and has access to a shared to a Teaching Assistant each day. The two children require help and support in all tasks (yes, even going to the toilet). I would not go as far to say the lady concerned is an “Angel” but it would come pretty close to how we as parents feel about the dedication she shows on a daily basis for crap wages.
All Teaching Assistants are employed to support the classroom teacher (to concentrate on teaching the rest of the children in the class).
“Look, the rest of us can see what’s going on.”
Maybe you think that children with Special Needs have no rights in society or you are just plain ignorant. You obviously do not have the insight to comment on such matters and demonstrate this by talking out of your arse.Or perhaps you are from the extreme right of the Nasty Party. If you are not the latter I suggest you may feel more at home in such company. Sorry, I forget, since the Coalition agreement, you are in that company!
I think there is truth in what both Chris and dominic are saying.
I agree with Chris that there is a lot that can be cut without the public noticing much. I have seen far too many examples in recent years of PCSOs (and police officers) spending their time doing things that are more about interfering in people’s lives than enforcing the law. There have been more than enough reports of the police harassing photographers on this site to demonstrate that.
But I am also sure Dominic is right that the scale of the cuts being proposed will mean some good things being cut.
Obviously the challenge for the Government is to ensure that we cut as much of the former and as little of the latter as possible.
Part of acheiving this will be genuine decentralisation of power.
I have responded but as yet nowt.
The point is usefull or not, in the public sector or private, there is a knock on effect. At the present time to seek to axe jobs knowing (yet denying to the electorate) as they must do (and know evidance is emerging that they do), is a dangourous thing to do if your objective is to “balance the books”.
The motivation is therfore libal to be something else, maybe a smaller state who knows as it has not be vocalised.
It may be that this is a good idea (I think not) that is not the point the point is it is an unvoiced objective over which the electorate has had no say, and that it is something over which they should have had a say at the general election we have just had.
@philinlancs
I’m proud to say my wife performs the sort of task you describe. 1:1 support for an autistic child that would otherwise be in an special needs school. Or in a very vulnerable state in a mainstream school.
Incidentally – my son does attend a special needs school. Unfortunately he will unlikely ever be able to attend mainstream school – and even his class has 2/3 classroom assistants at most.
I really worry about the general level of ignorance shown in this area by people like Chris. It makes reducing the provisions for our children so much easier. I mean worry as in genuine fear – not an abstract concern.
I only hope that Cameron remembers his own personal situation and realises this is something that will generate a visceral response from those affected
(we’re notinlancs by the way – but I may pass your message on all the same 🙂
“There have been more than enough reports of the police harassing photographers on this site to demonstrate that.”
The fact that these events are reported suggests they are unusual and therefore untypical, no ?
While this big state – small state ideological battle is fascinating, public spending as a percentage of GDP will still be higher in 2015 than it was almost every year under Blair. And taxation as a percentage of GDP is going up. Small state ideologues wouldn’t stand for either.
Joe – where can i access the data supporting your post? it would be very interesting to see predicted GDP share of public spending, and whether that includes the shares held in the banks.
thanks
@Andrew Stephens
I am very happy to hear that your wife has chosen to work with some of the most vulnerable in our society. It is not an easy option at all to choose to work with these children as the work can prove extremely challenging and thus mentally and physically draining. As you also mention that your son attends a special school both your wife and yourself will be aware of the mountain of paperwork required to receive even the most basic provision for children with special needs. You will also be in receipt of DLA which again is another mountain of red tape which needs renewing every so often. Bloody frustrating would not even start to describe the procedures involved. The proposed cuts can only make the situation worse and I too worry a great deal about the ignorance and total lack of empathy for the most vulnerable.
If Chris feels that he has provoked an “visceral” response from me he should also bear in mind that we (as parents of children with special needs) face such ignorance on a daily basis.
Isn’t it simple Keynesian ceonomics that if the Government runs a defict by spending more than it takes in tax then it can use the borrowing to create jobs. If then the Coalilition takes money out of the economy by paying back the money it has borrowed than those jobs will be lost? Should we not then admit that jobs will be lost and claim that they were only created in the first place using borrowed money and were therefore a fraud on the public. Any household knows that it can have a great time on borrowed money. Its the paying back that causes the problem!
The questions for the LibDems are:- 1. Are the Conservatives using the cuts as an excuse to reduce the size of the state? I don’t know the answer to that yet. 2. Is there an ‘ideal’ % of GDP that the Government should tax and spend? I don’t know the answer to that either.
@ David this household economics is what we had in the 80’s , despite selling everything we ever owned, despite north sea oil and the like, despite the cuts we still ran hugh deficits to pay for unemployment, still had riots on the streets due to youth poverty and helplessness and ended up with no industry apart from service amnd banks that have got us into this mess we are in today.
BTW when the tories took office in 1979 they inherited falling unemploymaent and a falling debt, mind you the course or is it curse of privatisation had actually allready started as part of the labour partys re structuring deal with the IMF (mind you without thge mania)
Dominic, the spectator published this http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/6109243/different-miliband-similar-deceit.thtml – the forecast figures can be confirmed at the OBR. I’ve not checked the past.
“Any household knows that it can have a great time on borrowed money.”
But a nation-state really isn’t the same as a household.
The obvious difference is that if the economy is stimulated, revenues rise and expenditure on benefits falls, and the deficit is therefore reduced. So it would be bad to go to an extreme and cut public spending so harshly that you choke off economic growth. Some sort of balance is needed, and it’s a matter of judgment as to where exactly the balance is to be struck.
That’s why I’m sceptical when people say “This _must_ be done”, “There is _no_ alternative”, and so on. Especially when they were saying only a month or two ago that it would really be better not to do it now, but to put off doing it for a while.
Indeed there is a big difference between governments and households. Governments can borrow a great deal more, and with no plans to ever pay it off. And often it can even be prudent to do this. Hence this debate, not about paying off debt, but merely about how soon we should try to borrow less than a quarter of what we spend, on top of all existing debts and planned future borrowing….
And it is clear from the various party numbers that this never was actually a binary choice of stimulus or borrowing reduction (not debt reduction – debt still increases massively!) All parties proposed borrowing reduction with relatively slight differences in method, extent and timing. If there were an alternative, somebody would have suggested it by now.
thanks for the link, joe. most illuminating.
@Andrew ““There have been more than enough reports of the police harassing photographers on this site to demonstrate that.”
The fact that these events are reported suggests they are unusual and therefore untypical, no ?”
The widespread nature of the reports would suggest not. It suggests to me that if we have enough police oficers with enough time on their hands to spend it harrassing members of the public who are breaking no laws that there is some slack to be cut.
A local example – a family (three generations) that we know locally were holding a barbecue recently on a grassy area near the bank of a local river when two PCSOs turned up to check on what they were doing. This was apparently in response to a report from a local resident that they were worried that some teenagers were setting fires.
Having turned up and found that, in fact, there were no teenager setting fires but a family enjoying a barbecue in a public space causing harm to nobody, I would expect that two busy PCSOs would then head off to somewhere they were actually needed.
But no, the PCSOs told the family to put out the babecue and stop drinking alcohol in a public place. When challenged to state what law was being broken they quoted the local by-laws that require members of the public to obey a police request to stop drinking in a public place. When the family refused, on the entirely reasonable grounds that they were neither breaking the law nor causing any nuisance to anyone, the PCSOs called for back up from a police officer, who turned up and backed up the PCSOs.
The family concede at that point but have subsequently taken the issue up with the Chief Constable and their local councillors, in turn no doubt taking up several people’s time and effort.
In my view these PCSOs and police officer clearly have time on their hands, or the local policing priorities are in a mess, or both. Either way there is slack to be cut.
@Liberal Neil
It would be so marvelous if the government would get rid of every single PCSO. There is no justification whatsoever for any of them being in their jobs at all.
if you get rid of the pcso where you live, do you think the police will bother turning up when you phone up and tell them a large group of youths are drinking and causing damage, i dont think so they have got bigger fish to catch.is it just me or has crime fallen in the last few years, get rid of pcso”s and watch your neighbourhood become ghetto”s where the hoody rules and people fear to go out at night.get real get the money back from the greedy bank s what the tax payer bailed them out. that will save thousans jobs
t fearon – you hit the nail so beautifully on the head. Get rid of PCSOs and there’s no one to answer the pathetic calls of livid busybodies who’ve seen a sixeen year old with a can of lager. There’s no one to teach our young people that the state supports those who automatically hate them.
PCSOs have done so much damage. We must get rid of them.
chris, i think you are in cloud cuckoo land most young people act responsible when drinking alcohol, but there is a small percentage are on hell bent on commiting crime and ruining peoples quality of life.get out of your ivory tower and come back into the real world. most ordinary people when asked what they fear the most is the group of youths making there lives hell. it seems to me that you dont know what you are talking about when you mention pcso”s. where i live they have done a fanatastic job in reducing asb and helping people in the community.when you talk about pcso it soundslike you have a personal grudge against them.the police and pcso”s work as a team which at the moment is cutting crime, but with your comments would see an increase.